Five Times: Eric's Happy Endings
by Halcyon.Promise
Summary: Five times Eric got his happy ending, and the one time he didn't.


**A/N: Someone on tumblr requested Eric + happy endings. I had a lot of fun with this. I'm quite proud of it, honestly. You can find the link to my tumblr on my homepage here. I'm always accepting requests, and I post some things there exclusively. **

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**One.**

The ring is a flurry of motion and the muted, repetitive thuds of flesh hitting flesh resonate through the high ceilinged room. As far as matches go, it looks as if the fight should be considered uneven. He has a handful of inches and easily thirty pounds of muscle on her. In comparison to his stocky, bulkily muscled figure her own is slender with long, lean muscle. Her hits don't contact with as much force as his do.

But his need to actually land to matter. This is where he is struggling. She knows him too well, ducking inside his range to use the sharp edges of her own body to greatest effect before retreating outside to regroup.

They dance together this way. It's an intimate match, between two people who have no real desire to hurt one another but neither is interested in loosing. The familiarity between them, as she preemptively shifts to avoid one of his favorite strikes, is apparent to anyone who watches.

Except they are unwatched. They are alone, and it is why, as he manages to catch her leg in the middle of a kick and pull it around his torso, sweeping out her other foot with his own leg to pin her on the ground, she can laugh. His thigh traps her own against the ground and his arm wraps tightly around her own torso to keep her from lashing out again.

She is well and truly caught, and she does not mind.

He should be frustrated by the fact that she doesn't continue the fight. Instead, he watches her as she laughs, and struggles to repress a smile. He enjoys this time with her. 

**Two**

Morning comes early in summer. Grey lightens the sky well before anyone other than the factionless are moving around the city. He thinks that maybe Amity is working as well, but the rest of the city is still sleeping.

It eludes him, though. He has slept in short increments but he cannot remain at rest. Now, he sits up against the pillows of his bed as pre-dawn light begins to creep into his room. His sheets fall down from his chest and he makes no move to grab at them. If he does, he would disturb the woman resting against him. Her leg is thrown over one of his, but his calf rests over her foot in a manner that can only be considered proprietary.

She is on her stomach, half leaning against his hip and half on the mattress. It is her figure that the sheet covers. Well, mostly. Bare shoulders (marked red with irritation from scruff and bruises sucked into the skin with his lips) peek out over the fabric, only to be covered by her hair that sprawls over her upper back and her face.

Sleep is not hard for her to come by. She has not stirred, not even as he reaches down to brush her hair aside. Now he can study the side of her face, as she presses it against his side. She wears one of his arms as if it were a blanket, draping heavily over her shoulder so his palm rests against the curve of her back.

He thinks that he did not realize before, how small she is. He finds it startling. He knows that if he looks, he will find bruises around her hips from his hands and he is even more surprised at the pang of guilt he feels.

Smoothing his free hand over the crown of her head, he gathers her in his arms and pulls her closer against him. She sleeps, unconcerned by the fact that she now rests on him completely. The trust is disconcerting, he thinks. But it feels right, having her in his arms.

Her sleeping face brings clarity to the matter. This is not a mistake, he thinks. 

**Three**.

For a period of time he had wondered if plans would ever come to fruition. Max does not like him. Other senior members of Dauntless question having such a young leader.

If youth and inexperience are black marks against him, he has resolved to give them nothing else to try to use against him. His skills are very nearly unmatched. The answers he gives in the interviews are thorough and thought out. He has a vision for Dauntless, an image in his head of what the faction could be. He knows there are plans, and he will influence them in his own way.

It has been a challenge to make everything fall into place. It's been worth it, though. He looks down at the pit from where he stands with the other Dauntless leaders, and no one speaks against him. (No one would dare, not now. He has made certain of this.)

Dauntless is never an orderly faction. Colors are bright, even in the dim lighting of the compound, light reflecting off of piercings or illuminating tattoos, hairstyles as bold and vibrant as the people themselves. He looks down through the crowd and for a moment, it's just a writhing mass. It lives and breathes on its own, regardless of the fuel that leadership provides. This is what it means to be Dauntless, this kind of chaos.

His heart pounds a little harder as he keeps looking down at the men and women who have broken out in celebration: their whoops and cheers ricochet off of the stone so loudly that his head aches with it.

He shouldn't be able to pick out one person in the crowd. It defies all logic.

Still, he finds that his eyes lock with hers. She is less animated than those around her, more restrained (a rarity in Dauntless), but she knows when he sees her. For a moment, it feels like time is suspended and everything else fades into a haze.

Her smile is bright as she looks up at him. Her lips form a word that he can't possibly hope to hear but he imagines that he feels her breath whispering at her ear, anyway.

Congratulations.

It doesn't matter, he knows. This is the right thing to do. But to see her smile up at him before she slips away within the crowd steadies him. This will work. He has gotten almost everything that he has worked towards up to this point. He will not fail at the rest, now. Not when it mattered more than ever.

**Four**.

He hears the crack of a shot and his heart is in his throat. He cannot swallow, cannot breathe - but what he can do is move. Other members of the patrol scatter at the report of a firearm. He is not among them.

Instead, he rushes forward to the intersection of the street. She is small, he knows, and he can lift her without a problem. Returning fire with ruthless efficiency, he crouches over her figure in the road. She is wheezing and he has never been so happy to hear labored breathing in his life. She is alive.

It is only later when they are on the train returning to the compound that he takes the time to painstakingly reassure himself of her wholeness. The vest she wears had stopped the bullet, but an ugly bruise is now blooming across her ribcage. She flinches when he touches it but does not recoil from his fingers. His palm is warm as he settles it lightly to span the width of the blemish.

They sit shoulder to shoulder, silent as the train wheels click against the rail. He takes the time to remember what it felt like when he thought that he had lost her. He swears that he will never let himself be in that position again. He will not ever have to feel the same way that he did today. He will never be so helpless. And she will never be hurt in the way that he feared she had been today. It is a promise, and one he makes to himself. He will use all of his authority as a leader to make certain it is carried out.

He will remember for the rest of his life what it had felt like to believe that he had lost her. He will ensure that he never has to feel that again. 

**Five**.

Having to speak with her without making eye contact is an unnerving thing. He finds that he cannot read her the way he normally does. Before this moment, he hadn't even known it was something he did. Now that he is abruptly confronted with the loss of it, though, he mourns its absence and wishes that he could make her turn around.

She doesn't look at him. The silence between them is overwhelming.

He reaches out to take her by the wrist, reeling her back in more closely to him. No one else sees: the music is too loud and the pit is too crowded. No one realizes what is playing out underneath their very noses.

The idea of keeping her against him for the rest of the night is appealing. It is a feeling that he has come to grips with over time.

She clearly has had much less time to process. He waits for an answer, wondering (not for the first time) if he has managed to insult her without meaning to. Before he can begin to replay his words over in his head though, she turns in his arms.

It is gently coaxing, tugging at his grip to allow her the freedom of movement that she desires. Very reluctantly he allows it.

When her hand reaches up to rest on his shoulder he fights back anticipation. He wants to draw her close, demand an answer, refuse to let her go. Instead, he waits.

What's more is that she knows what this is doing to him. Her eyes are bright in the way they get when she's laughing without making any noise. He should be disgruntled by the fact but instead, he only smiles down at her. It is not a free, open grin - but it is just enough, the incline of his lips, that she understands.

"It's only been you for so long," she says quietly. She thinks that maybe, it's only ever been him. "I never had any interest in anyone else."

His arms lock around her and his cheek is buried against the crown of her head. "Only you," he replies, his voice low with gravel. "Just you."

And he is glad that she has agreed, that she will be his in the ways that matter most. She is proprietary though, and has told him that if it is to be so then he will also be hers. He doesn't mind the correction. He finds himself pleased that she's willing to make it apparent to the rest of Dauntless as well. 

**One**.

In a faction of rambunctious individuals, loud in manner and voice, she has never spoken in raised tones. It was an oddity then, and it remains so now.

He cannot hear what she says to Four from where he is kneeling. Ties cut into his wrists as other former-Dauntless ('Factionless,' he had sneered earlier, before choking on the word when he realized she was, yet again, among them) watched him. He does not know what she is saying to Four, but his temper flames at the sight.

Something claws in his stomach, ravenous and ugly. It tells him that he has been a fool. It says that he has never had a chance, not at the things that he truly wants. Not at the things that matter most. Not with her.

She turns, and his breath catches. He is glad no one will realize it, because Four swears loudly in that moment. It is a distraction to everyone but him.

She is the thing that has mattered the most.

How has he gotten it so wrong?

No one stops her as she walks forward. In fact, they step back. It is an illusion of privacy and it is an illusion of space, but he cannot think about that now. He only thinks about her. In a heartbeat his mind is flooded with memories of the years they've spent together. He finds himself thinking that they weren't enough.

The floor is hard on his knees and he goes to protest as she lowers herself to her own before him. She reaches out with a hand, though, her thumb gently brushing against his lower lip. She settles back on her legs, so agonizingly close that he can feel her heat, smell her - but he cannot touch. His shoulders roll as he attempts to instinctively, but the bite of the ties reminds him.

They are not in his apartment, or in her room. They are not on the train exchanging comfort in moments of quiet.

Where they stand now is someplace completely different. He is the man who is responsible for starting a war. She is the woman who has chosen to do what she thought was right. They are on opposite sides of the spectrum and he cannot bridge it now.

Her hand cups his cheek, and she leans forward. He feels her hair brush against his shoulder.

The words she speaks - when she speaks - are only for him. They are soft enough that no one else will hear them. "I loved you as best I could," she whispers, her voice thick with emotion but her eyes remained dry. "I would have loved you more, if you let me."

And her hand falls away, and he leans forward as if to follow, but she is standing now and turning away to the door. She will not stay.

She cannot stay.

And for all of her resolve, she flinches when she hears the shot of a gun echo through Candor headquarters, and her heart feels like the pieces that she had torn it into on the day she left him are being shredded even smaller now. She knows that she will never be whole again.


End file.
